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Why we’re ending this newsletter

December 3, 2019 by Max

Max here. From day one of Oversubscribed, we’ve always tried to give no-bullshit advice and be as honest as possible with you. We’re going to take that to another level with this, our final issue of the Oversubscribed newsletter.

Mike and I originally started this newsletter to promote our book, but quickly realized the newsletter had a lot of value in and of itself. Our goals with the newsletter were to help other founders and to build an audience for ourselves, in the belief that such an audience would be valuable down the road, even if we didn’t know exactly how. But we never really grew that audience much beyond our ~500 average weekly readers—in part because Mike and I quickly got distracted by new opportunities, and never really put in the necessary time.

Mike had a tweet last month that really stuck with me:

He’s right: when something in your startup isn’t working—even if it’s “kinda working”—it’s better to shut it down and move on then keep working on a zombie company forever. After all, time is your most important resource as an entrepreneur.

Oversubscribed isn’t a startup, and it certainly doesn’t take up as much of our time as a zombie startup would, but the same advice still applies. When Mike and I met last week to discuss the path forward, we came to the conclusion that we’d been running this newsletter on autopilot. Other than habit, we no longer had a clear answer for why we were still doing it.

So we decided to end the weekly newsletter. We’d like to think that this is the ultimate example of us following our own advice. We’ve always strived to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, and I think we’re doing that here.

While this newsletter will no longer arrive in your inbox every week, we’ll still use this list periodically as the general Oversubscribed mailing list, with updates on the book and news about all things Oversubscribed. We’re planning on releasing a third edition of the book early next year. Additionally, Mike will continue writing about similar topics with his new personal newsletter, with the first issue coming later this month. All of our readers will have their subscriptions automatically rolled over to his newsletter. (There’ll be an unsubscribe button in the first issue if you don’t want to hear from Mike for some reason—but I recommend you stay subscribed!)

Beyond Mike’s newsletter, you want to keep up with us going forward, the best way is to follow us on Twitter and Medium:

We’re incredibly grateful to all of you guys for the readership and support—it’s been a blast writing to you every week. This may be the end of this newsletter, but it isn’t the end of Oversubscribed!

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